White Paper

Improving Regional Planning in the Bay Area

Many attempts have been made to foster better collaboration between the Association of Bay Area Governments and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. A proposal to establish a merged planning department has again opened up the discussion about the future of regional planning in the Bay Area. SPUR recommends studying a full merger of the two agencies.

Report

Strengthening the Bay Area's Regional Governance

The Bay Area economy has rebounded from the recession, but major regional challenges threaten our continued prosperity. SPUR makes the case that some of the biggest threats to the Bay Area’s long-term economic competitiveness are best addressed through better regional governance.

Advocacy Letter

SPUR’s Comments on Plan Bay Area

Plan Bay Area is an important step forward in comprehensive regional planning in the Bay Area. Our comments on the plan address the gap between our vision of a more concentrated region and the tools available to achieve it.

Ongoing Initiative

The Future of Work

In the last three decades, employment has spread from city centers to car-centric, low-density office parks. How can we move more jobs to places served by transit? SPUR looks at how to make this shift while strengthening innovation, job growth and the prosperity of the Bay Area.

The Urbanist

The Northern California Megaregion

Northern California, home to 14 million people, is expected to add at least 10 million people by 2050. How we plan for and accommodate that growth is the defining question for urban planning in Northern California today.

SPUR Report

Beyond the Tracks

California cities anticipating the rewards of new high-speed rail stations may fail to reap the full economic and environmental benefits without key land-use planning. SPUR identifies strategies that will contribute to the success of high-speed rail and help realize the full potential of this multi-billion-dollar system.

Find more of SPUR's regional planning research

Updates and Events

The latest update to Plan Bay Area is now underway — and its findings have revealed some troubling flaws in the planning tools we have for managing our region’s biggest challenges: making housing affordable and maintaining our transportation infrastructure. Now that these issues have been made apparent, it’s time to ask what we should be doing differently.

SPUR comments on the Plan Bay Area 2040 draft preferred scenario, calling on MTC and ABAG to explore and propose major changes in our current approach to planning, to add an implementation chapter at the end of the Plan and to assess alternative futures with different control totals for jobs and housing.

The Bay Area is changing. We are living in an age of climate change, housing shortages, income inequality, fiscal stress and — soon — driverless cars, trucks and buses. Our local governments will not be able to take on the significant challenges of these times on their own. We need effective — even visionary — regional government to put its resources toward solving them.

Sydney, Australia’s planning system is entirely different from the Bay Area’s, primarily because of the strong role of its state government in planning decisions. What can the Bay Area learn from its approach?

Santa Clara's City Place development, San Jose’s Diridon Station Area Plan and Mountain View’s North Bayshore Precise Plan seek to reshape growth in Silicon Valley. What do they tell us about the future of Silicon Valley and what do they mean for the region? Can we expect something different than auto-oriented suburbs? Are we “thinking different” — or repeating the mistakes of the past?

SPUR suggests some considerations that we think should be addressed in the EIR/EIS for the San Francisco-San Jose segment of California High-Speed Rail. The letter emphasizes Diridon Station, the Diridon Station Area and Central San Jose given that San Jose is High-Speed Rail's gateway to the Bay Area.